Unfinished Business
by Zea T
Summary: The war took many mechs to the Well with their lives' ambitions unfulfilled. Few had the strength and determination to see their goals brought to a conclusion. Post-DotM (spoilers), eventual Jazz/Prowl.
1. Chapter 1

Title: **Unfinished Business**

Verse: Movie-verse

Rating: T

Genre: angst, supernatural

Warnings: post-DotM (**spoilers!**), character death, eventual Prowl/Jazz

Characters: Prowl, Jazz, Optimus Prime, Ratchet, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker

Summary: _The war took many mechs to the Well with their lives' ambitions unfulfilled. Few had the strength and determination to see their goals brought to a conclusion._

Disclaimer: Characters and situations are used without permission, and belong to Hasbro and their original copyright holders. This story is written for the pleasure and not for profit.

Note: This was originally going to be another short one shot for my anthology "Stronger Together". It grew to a point where it was lengthy even for a two-shot, so gets its own post. I'm posting both chapters and their epilogue at once.

* * *

**Part One**

The silences were Prowl's first clue.

They weren't anything overt, nothing the tactician could call others on, even if Ratchet hadn't insisted he take his first half-orn on Earth off-duty to rest and recuperate. To a certain extent they were even to be expected. The Earth-native humans of NEST, and some of the unfamiliar Autobots on the base's roster, were naturally wary of Prime's newly-arrived Second-in-Command. Prowl would have been surprised if he _hadn't_ been the subject of uncertain and speculative looks.

It was the wary expressions he got from his fellow officers – Ratchet and Optimus Prime most of all – that troubled him. Conversations stopped as he approached; unintelligible, half-heard whispers followed him. Only innocent expressions met his questioning gaze, the few times he'd let himself show a mild reaction.

Perhaps there was a good reason. He might even learn it when Ratchet yielded sufficiently to release the medical locks barring him from the NEST database. As it stood though, Prowl couldn't be sure.

The tactician held his door-wings high and wide as he walked across the concrete floor of the main NEST hangar. His footfalls rang sharply against the hard surface, their echoes reflecting back to him from the sparse interior and metal walls. Standing beside the command gantry, his conversation with Lennox apparently forgotten, or at least set aside until Prowl had come and gone, Ratchet watched him. Sharp optics checked the volume and concentration of the ration Prowl fetched, and he felt medical scanners play across his door-wings as he turned to walk away. He ignored the medic with dignity, tilting his helm in a nod to the human major on the gantry and feeling an odd comfort when Lennox, at least, acknowledged his courtesy with a sketchy wave of his own.

The floor grew grittier underfoot as he approached the main hangar doors, this world's all-pervasive dust carried in on tires and pedes, or just drifting into the confined space on the breeze. Devoid of other stimulus, Prowl analysed the silicates and carbon grains grating beneath his weight with the same automatic routines that monitored the humans and Autobots around him. The moving pool of stillness he carried with him deepened as he passed a few of the mechs, gathered to socialize by the hangar door. He didn't stop, as if by moving constantly onwards, he could escape the silent walls that had closed around him.

Part of him, the illogical part that he'd given into so completely not long ago, and which his tactical processor urged him to ignore, half-expected to hear a musical voice call his name, to feel a servo reach out and draw him back into the circle of light.

Stepping out into the chill night air, looking up at constellations that were still jarring and unfamiliar, Prowl tried not to let his reaction show when the expected call never came. As his door-wings slumped behind him, he knew he'd failed. He knew, too, that in all the vorns since he bade his friend farewell, he'd never missed Jazz more.

* * *

The electric-blue mini-bot should have been Prowl's second clue, if he'd only recognized it as such.

At least… electric-blue was the closest the Autobot tactician could readily come to describing the strange quality of light and colour that first caught his notice. The mech glistened in the evening light of Prowl's fourth day on Earth, his frame marked out in highlights and shadows, a peculiar glow emanating from his plating. It could almost have been a reflection of the slowly-rising moon, except that there was an energy to the shimmer, an animation Prowl didn't perceive in the cool moonlight.

Prowl's first thought, that the glow must be akin to the Cherenkov emission that accompanied high radioactivity, was belied by the mini-bot's casual stride and the lack of concern from the vulnerable organics he passed. His next – some form of phosphorescence or fluorescence – might address the _how_ but did nothing to address the fundamental _why_.

This world seemed to have brought out the Autobots' long-suppressed preference for bright display paint – perhaps in unconscious defence against the garish colours of the organic life, or maybe in emulation of it, given the catastrophic loses they'd endured here. Either way, Optimus Prime's red and blue flames and Ratchet's frankly unflattering yellow-green had come as something of a shock, and as a striking contrast to the black and silver that Prowl had chosen for himself. Even taking the prevailing trend into account though, this seemed to take the usual personalization of their frames to a somewhat ludicrous extreme.

It also didn't explain how three Earth-days could pass before Prowl encountered so striking a mech.

Prowl squinted past the luminescence, trying to match the mini-bot's frame to the crew roster. Optimus, bowing to Ratchet's demands, had restricted Prowl's database access to the most basic list of names for now, but even so there were relatively few mechs he wouldn't… recognise…

Prowl's mental process tailed off. For a moment, his processor played an old memory file over the output of his optics, painting the armour in brilliant red, matching the stomping progress to a pugnacious attitude and an indomitable determination.

The mech rounded a corner of NEST's main hangar, disappearing from view. Standing alone in the growing darkness, his door-wings trembling in the cool breeze, Prowl gazed after him. If there was a match to this minibot's identity on the list he'd been given, it wasn't obvious. It was a strain not to dive into the database to search one out. He was fully conscious of Ratchet's likely reaction if he was caught trying to work before medically approved. The temptation was there regardless regardless. Part of him dearly wished to know what he was in for; another part dreaded the discovery. Was it possible, he wondered, for one mech to resemble another as much in spark as in frame? If so, if this Autobot was anything like the abrasive minibot who'd sworn to fight the Decepticons until his spark extinguished, and had done just that, then Prowl had his work cut out for him.

He suspected the natives of this world weren't ready for another Cliffjumper.

* * *

It was as he left his assigned quarters on the fifth Earth-day that Prowl confirmed once and for all that something was being kept from him. Although, he considered, neither Ratchet nor Optimus Prime could be considered entirely blameless in his discovery.

"He's uneasy." Prime's rumble wasn't meant to carry, and Prowl hadn't meant to approach his friends and comrades unnoticed, but neither mech could help their nature. Echoes distorted the deep voice, the sound wave bouncing off the steel walls of NEST's hangar, and into the residential complex. Prowl picked out the words with the ease of one who'd spent long vorns listening to his Prime's commands, his door-wings angling to focus on the vibrations through instinct alone. "I believe he has noticed something."

"How is that possible?" There was a whirr of Ratchet's saw-blade, its lazy spinning a frustrated reaction rather than an aggressive one. "Anyway, we can't tell him. Not yet. He needs rest, not more stress, Optimus. You saw him when he landed. I've not seen him looking that tired and run down for vorns. Not since the last time Jazz…"

Ratchet stopped, his vents choking out an audible cough, and Prowl stopped too, remaining in the residential corridor a few klicks longer than he'd intended to, rather than stepping out into sight in the main hangar.

Ratchet and Optimus knew, as no one else did in these latter days of the war, that Jazz and Prowl were one another's last reminders of a time and a life now gone. They'd witnessed enough of the pair's long association to see the pattern – that Prowl tended to pay less attention to his own needs when Jazz was assigned elsewhere, and that Jazz's reckless tendencies came to the fore without Prowl's presence to hold him in check.

The thought, the guilt that he hadn't been there, stalled Prowl's vents. He shuddered, grieving anew.

Optimus and Ratchet didn't know, they couldn't, that a short few orns before, the tactician had been in near-optimal condition. The mere anticipation of his oldest friend's reaction had been enough to keep Prowl well-fuelled and rested through their long vorns of searching. His friends had no idea that Prowl's exhausted state resulted entirely from the news he'd encountered on reaching this system's perimeter beacons. His weary landing five days before was just the last step in a shift in his world-view… one so painful and intense that he'd lingered for orns in a cold, distant orbit around this world's primary, trying to adjust to it before making his presence known.

Until Prowl himself understood his spark-deep horror on learning of Jazz's loss – above and beyond the shock of losing Ironhide, losing Que, and so many others – he had no intention of sharing it.

"By rights I should be keeping him off-duty for a dozen orns, not just half of one! If it wasn't for – " For the second time, Ratchet's voice broke off mid-sentence, and this time Prowl felt the tingle of medical sensors and knew his presence had been noticed at last. He stepped out into the hangar with the same quiet grace that had carried him so close. He tried not to remember how much of his now-instinctive stealth he'd learnt from his departed friend.

"Optimus," he acknowledged softly, moving to his Prime's side. The larger mech's optics searched his faceplates, and for a few micro-klicks, Prowl thought his wait might be at an end. He should have known better than to expect his Prime to yield. Optimus Prime's expression shut down, mirroring the wariness of Ratchet's. The Prime nodded a greeting. One large hand reached out to squeeze Prowl's shoulder, but there was no revelation to come, none of the explanation the tactician craved.

"You are well, old friend?"

Despite everything, the question provoked a wry smile. Optimus knew him better than that. Prime's optics twinkled in recognition of his folly even before Prowl spoke.

"I have to confess that I find enforced inactivity somewhat tiresome."

"Two more days." Ratchet's arms were crossed over his bumper, the finger-servos of one hand playing against the other forearm. "At least." There was no compromise in the medic's posture, only determination and a hint of the compassion the irascible mech was always so careful to hide. Ratchet's expression softened, and Prowl realised that his door-wings had slumped a little without his conscious volition. "I'm not insisting for the sake of it, you know." He glanced at Prime, a sigh escaping him as he went on. "Your tactical processor is already overclocking, and I want it to calm down before we catch you up on things."

Prowl raised a brow-ridge, his own arms crossing in unconscious imitation. "And it doesn't occur to you that my tactical algorithms might be eased by a full and thorough understanding of our current circumstances?"

This time Ratchet's snort was more amused than regretful. Prime's optics, too, danced with a good humour his Second-in-Command couldn't explain.

"Believe me, Prowl. There is _nothing_ about life on this crazy planet that's going to make your life any easier."

* * *

It was on the sixth day of his medical leave that Prowl broke Ratchet's proscription, despite all his good intentions. Not for the first time in their long association, it took Sideswipe to break his resolve. Sideswipe… and Sunstreaker.

His days were starting to fall into a pattern now, driven by this planet's rapid rotation and the quick heartbeats of its natives. His new-found habit of touring the base's roads in the afternoon sun was purely a practical one, of course – nothing to do with the soothing, comforting properties of Sol's warm yellow light.

It was essential that he learn the lie of the land, become familiar with base routine and accustomed to his new alt-mode in advance of battle. It was important too that the base complement grow accustomed to his presence, and ready to accept his commands. His tours brought him into contact with mechs and men he'd seldom encounter otherwise, although the mystery blue mini-bot remained infuriatingly elusive.

Despite the work-oriented justification for his excursions, it helped that Ratchet thoroughly approved. Prowl's internal energy reserves were recovering well, boosted by the regular infusion of solar power, and the satisfied nods from Ratchet gave his victim hope of soon escaping the medic's overprotective concern.

This day was no different, except that he decided to reverse his usual route. The dirt was dry and crisp under his tires as he set out along the back-road from the hangar, towards the rise that lay to their north. With the adjustment to his schedule, he might just traverse the shallow valley beyond before the afternoon shadows lengthened across it. Prowl coasted through the afternoon sun, comfortable in the utility of his actions, even if physical comfort eluded him.

The sun was warm, true, but this world's ever-present dust, thrown up by his passage, settled around him and coated his frame. He paused on the ridge to open and close his doors in a vain attempt to shake the grimy coating free and ease the tingling resonance in his door-wings. Not for the first time, he wondered when he'd get to experience the intense, apparently acid-free, rainfall mentioned so frequently by this world's media. As alarming as the concept initially sounded, just now a cleansing shower would be very welcome.

Then he looked down into the dip beyond, and any thought of his own discomfort vanished.

His first reaction on encountering Sunstreaker racing his brother across the dirt, was one of pure relief. The Sideswipe Prowl remembered was little more than a youngling, jubilant and playful, even when thrown into the heart of battle. The Sideswipe who now, unthinkably, formed part of Prime's officer corps, was an older and grimmer mech. The youthful light in his optics had dimmed, his once-plentiful laughter now rare and often bitter. He was still Sideswipe – still impulsive, still eager for battle, a skilled warrior and deceptively quick-minded – but something, dramatic and traumatic, had changed the mech almost beyond recognition.

That change in the silver frontliner had concerned Prowl more than he'd realized, and the only explanation his tactical processor could suggest left him aching inside. He hadn't had the spark to ask, not yet. Not with his own loss still so raw and new.

To see Sunstreaker racing his twin brother relieved a fear he hadn't dared give voice.

The moment passed. Confusion washed away his relief, and a furrow creased Prowl's brow-ridge as he gazed down at the racing vehicles. He'd been here a half-orn, walked through the Autobot ranks, spoken – albeit briefly – to Sideswipe and seen him train, and all the time without catching sight of the mech's twin? That would have been inconceivable, even if the arrogant mech had still been sporting his usual golden armour. With Sunstreaker clad in the same blue phosphorescence as the strangely-familiar mini-bot – a mech Prowl had yet to meet in person – it was beyond reason.

Sunstreaker gleamed in the first rays of the morning sun. His lines seemed to be sketched out in shadows and light, the beauty of his shell made into something otherworldly, almost ethereal, by the glow that emanated from it. It suited him, somehow, as if he might be the only mech in existence with the style to carry off the look… and yet it was wrong. The frontliner Prowl knew would never agree to share his colour-scheme with another, or to exchange his classic golden sheen for something so garish.

Prowl stared. It was impossible, utterly impossible, that he could have overlooked a blue-white Sunstreaker until now. The evidence of his own optical sensors insisted otherwise.

Sideswipe braked, slewing slightly to bring his forward sensors to bear on the ridge. Prowl backed off, letting the rise of the land hide the twins from sight. He couldn't have said why, only that he was gripped by a sudden certainty: he was intruding on something he wasn't meant to see.

He rocked on his tyres, unsure how to proceed. Should he reroute his excursion? He had no reason to do so, and yet…

Prowl was still considering his options when Sideswipe topped the ridge alone. The silver Corvette Stingray halted, looking down on Prowl's new alt-form, for several long klicks before the sound of transformation filled the air.

Prowl transformed in turn, shrugging plating into place and wincing as his door-wings shifted through the still-unfamiliar sequence.

"Hey." Sideswipe's greeting was awkward, his hesitation in addressing someone who'd been his superior for many more vorns than he'd been a fellow officer natural. "I wasn't expecting to see you here."

"Sideswipe…" By rights, Prowl should have responded with similar small talk, tried to ease the tension in the situation, even in response to so weak an opening gambit. Instead the question escaped from him – driven in equal parts by confusion and uncertainty: "Why is Sunstreaker not listed on the personnel roster of this division?"

He might have slapped the mech. Sideswipe's helm snapped back. His swords slid out of their arm sockets, his entire frame becoming tense and defensive. Startled, Prowl found himself bracing. Wary, he watched as Sideswipe's optics dilated, and as the swordsmech struggled to get a hold of his emotions.

"Why isn't Sunstreaker on the roster?" Sideswipe repeated, far too quietly, far too calmly. "For a very good reason." His optics dimmed, the blades sliding back into their sheaths. "There was a battle. Almost twenty vorns ago. A battle so insignificant it doesn't have a name." Sideswipe spun on his heel, turning his face away. He paused, bright sunlight reflecting from his metallic shell, but not hiding his bitter snarl. "My brother offlined, Prowl. So if you're looking to dump guard duty on his aft, I guess you'll just have to count him out."

Sideswipe transformed and peeled away in one swift movement. Dust hung in the air, choking off the warmth of the sun and swathing Prowl in shadow. An angry mech left behind him one mired in the deepest bewilderment, each alone with their guilt and loss.

* * *

"You know Ratchet will have your plating if he catches you."

Prime's voice startled Prowl, enough so that he jumped on his tyres, his armoured shell rattling around him. Optimus gazed down at his alt-mode tactician with considering optics. To anyone else, Prowl was simply parked on the concrete apron outside the hangar, enjoying the sunlight after his drive. Only Optimus Prime seemed to have realised his Second had another reason for lurking within wireless range of their centre of operations.

The NEST database was alien to Prowl, but it gave an easy access route into the far more familiar the Autobot mainframe it was built upon. The tactician had dived into the data-space with abandon, using his own security codes where Prime had activated them, and Jazz's hacks where conventional access was barred or too slow. He'd had the base personnel files in his grasp within klicks, scanning them for the mech… no, two mechs… who logic dictated had to be there. He was still trying to process the results of his search when Optimus Prime sought him out.

If Prowl could have avoided transforming, he would have done so. Prime knew him too well, could read the agitation and uncertainty in his frame almost as well as Jazz had. Staying in alt-mode would be unforgivably rude for that very reason. Prowl shifted form with reluctance. He took his time, letting the sequence work out some of his restless energy, and kept his optics downcast for fear of what they revealed. He heard and sensed Prime's vents falter nonetheless, and the large mech's engine throbbed a deeper note of concern.

"Prowl…" Prime's voice drew Prowl's gaze up against his will. There was a considering look on Optimus's face, and his optics were bright with worry. "I encountered Sideswipe a few breems ago."

It was as much invitation as statement. Optimus was probing, trying to determine whether there was a problem, or perhaps giving Prowl an opportunity to voice the one he knew existed. Prowl hesitated, far from sure himself what to say.

"Prime…"

Alarms split the air. Warnings scrolled through the communications system of both Autobots, alerts and status updates flooding the network in a flurry of ordered chaos. Inside the hangar, human shouts and running footsteps echoed and re-echoed. All around, Autobot engines kicked into higher gear, readying for battle.

Optimus Prime transformed and peeled out without hesitation, calling orders as he went. Prowl backed to one side, clearing the hangar doors, painfully aware that he was off the battle roster. His weapons systems were in optimal condition, of course; not even Ratchet questioned that prioritisation this late in the war. On the other hand, he wasn't briefed on the situation. His knowledge of human tactics was limited to a few joors of watching the NEST teams train, and the distorted lens of their broadcast media. At best he'd be of limited help. At worst, given his overall physical state and already strained tactical processor, he'd be a liability to his own side.

Not, it would appear, that his fighting skills were actually needed.

The Decepticons stranded on Earth by the collapse of their Chicago beachhead were a disordered and leaderless rabble. For this loose coalition of three mechs to attack NEST's home base seemed suicidal, and perhaps that was precisely what it was: evidence of a madness fuelled by hunger, despair and the desire for revenge.

Their motivation was irrelevant. The startled perimeter guards engaged one ground-format. Two made it past, the sheer unexpected audacity of their strike allowing it to penetrate NEST territory. Both were rapidly intercepted, by human squads and Autobot forces acting in fascinating unison.

At least, Prowl realised as he transformed, the cohort led by Prime worked as a smoothly-oiled team. Sideswipe's though…

Prowl had seen the front-line swordsmech fight more times than he could count, and seen him train here on Earth. The warrior he watched now, the one who waved his human support back and leapt onto his adversary with a snarl, wasn't the skilled mech he knew. Sideswipe was angry, almost to the point of abandoning reason. And that, Prowl knew, was likely his fault and his alone.

The human unit and junior Autobots assigned to Sideswipe could do no more than watch, shifting their positions as the vicious hand-to-hand fight went on, afraid to fire into the melee but readying their weapons for any chance of a clear shot. They were all too aware, as Prowl was, that their young officer was tiring. The Decepticon easily out-matched him in size, and probably mass and power too. A blow from a jagged energon blade cut deep into Sideswipe's silver plating; another, from a fist almost as large as Sideswipe's head, had to have rattled his processor.

Still, the Autobot wouldn't fall back.

Prowl threw the briefest of glances around him. Prime and Lennox were fully engaged with a behemoth even larger than Sideswipe's opponent. Ratchet was nowhere in sight, and the chances of the warrior listening to anyone else were slim in the extreme.

Hacking the inter-unit com system was not difficult for the tactician, whose tendrils of code already stretched into the base network. Picking his moment was harder.

"Be ready," his soft voice whispered into the ears of the mechs and men around the vicious fight.

Their timing had to be perfect. So did his.

"Sideswipe! Down!"

Sideswipe flattened himself to the floor, his frame obeying the barked order before his processor had time to contest it. The Decepticon's sword swung wildly, slicing through the volume Sideswipe's chest-plate had occupied micro-klicks before. The big mechanism swayed, unbalanced, and then the aggressor was lost, caught in the dazzling crossfire of a dozen heavy-gauge weapons.

Prowl's door-wings slumped in relief. Sideswipe was dust-coated. Energon, seeping from his breached armour plates, carved tracks through the grime. But he was alive.

Not that the mech himself seemed to appreciate that. His expression as he clambered to his feet was one of deep frustration. Angry optics searched out the source of the unwelcome intervention… and widened.

"Prowl!"

Sideswipe's expression, and the cry in another, fear-strained voice, were all the warning the tactician had. The full weight of a mech crashed into him, slamming him to the ground, and a moment later the shriek of a missile cut through the air where he'd stood. It exploded against the hangar wall with enough force to send Prowl tumbling across the dirt, at the mercy of the shockwave and the expanding, turbulent cloud it dragged behind it.

The mech who'd saved his life tumbled too, the eerie, blue-white glow of his armour a dramatic contrast to the yellow-red fireball against which it was silhouetted. Prowl's entire frame tingled from contact with the other mech, brief as it had been, his plating burning hot and cold at the same time and prickling with an unnatural energy. His audio sensors shrieked with feedback from the blast, but echoed too with his own name, shouted in musical tones he'd never thought to hear again.

Prowl stared, optics shocked and dilated with disbelief, into a blue visor and a worried expression. He felt his tactical processor heat beyond tolerances, his algorithms looping as they strained to separate fantasy from reality. Conflicting certainties competed for precedence, leaving him trying to process the impossible.

The helm tilted to one side. A too-familiar, lop-sided grin spread across faceplates that seemed constructed entirely from shadows and brilliant, electric-blue highlights.

"Hey there, Prowler," Jazz said, and Prowl's world went black.

* * *

"Don't try to move."

Prowl's audio receptors were the first system he was consciously aware of. The sounds he detected carried meaning – he was sure of that. His free-wheeling memory algorithms tagged them with the image of a gruff face and a vague sense of concern.

"Prowl? Can you hear me?"

His systems throbbed on a low note… or perhaps his processor was simply underclocking enough to affect his time and frequency perception?

Yes. The tactician felt unreasonably smug at reaching a solid conclusion. Yes, he knew this feeling. After a lifetime of battle and the strains of a fine-tuned processor, he had more than a passing acquaintance with waking under the influence of powerful sedatives.

His optics onlined, their passive gaze resting on the ceiling directly above him. He didn't bother to move them. The gruff-voice-person might trigger a hazy unease but Prowl also associated him with these episodes, and knew he was entirely safe in the mech's hands. As long as the non-native sedative programmes held sway in his systems there was little point in trying to move, and no motivation whatsoever to do so. The medical codes were fighting a losing battle against his tactical algorithms, in any case. They'd collapse under the onslaught soon enough.

"Prowl?"

The small part of Prowl that cared had a blurred inkling that sooner or later, embarrassment would chase away his comfortable ennui, but honestly, for the moment, that threat had no power over him. Not yet. A pop-up message from his tactical processor, and Prowl's processor kicked up a notch. At least one of the sedatives had been analysed and countered, he realised, and with that realisation came at least the suggestion that this might be a good thing. If he could just think clearly…

"Prowler?"

Different voice. Prowl's head rolled to one side without conscious instruction, his unfocussed optics searching for something… someone…

The frame, once a polished silver, now gleamed with quite a different radiance. It seemed to flicker, to glisten as if illuminated by a cold flame, somewhere just out of sight. The mech was difficult to look at directly, disorientating to Prowl's lagging optics. He sat on a berth beside the tactician's, knees drawn up to his chest-plates, and his helm resting on them. Small movements left steaks of afterglow behind them, and the mech was never entirely still, had never been still in his entire existence. Slender finials tapered to points either side of a sculpted helm. Between them, the blue-white shimmer framed a visor lit with a much deeper, warmer hue.

Prowl's processor shrieked. His frame heated, trying to dissipate the waste energy as his logical systems tried and failed to accommodate the output from his optics.

Someone moved beside him, brushing the side of his helm, and a moment later, new lines of code streamed through his systems like a cold wave. He shuddered, forced back into the uncaring haze in which thinking felt like trying to wade through a turgid, congealed oil-bath.

"Prowl, listen to me. That's the last sedative you don't already have counter-coding for. If you can stop yourself destroying it too fast, this is going to be easier on all of us."

Gruff-voice-safe-person… Ratchet… was talking again. Prowl didn't comprehend at first. And then his processor supplied a second name… Jazz… and he stopped trying.

"Prowl? Are you hearing any of this?"

Blue-white faceplates, clearer by the second now, tilted to one side. One corner of their slender lips quirked upwards into a small, serious smile. "Best answer him, Prowler. Y' know Ratch gets tetchy when you ain't payin' him no mind."

"Ratchet?" Prowl didn't take his optics from the impossible sight. His voice wavered in his own audios, still deeper than usual, and unsteady.

"Now you choose to listen? Do you have any idea how many joors I've spent defragging your systems?"

"Ratchet," Prowl repeated, rebooting his optics. Their output remained unchanged. He shook his head, trying to clear it. "I need to be taken off duty."

Something smacked the side of his helm. Prowl turned quickly, cycling his sensors in shock and disbelief. Ratchet scowled down at him, the hand that slapped him still raised. "You _were_ off-duty, you slagger. Didn't stop you crashing harder than I've seen for deca-vorns."

The blow had been gentle, but it helped nonetheless, activating Prowl's top-level self-defence programming and boosting power to his tactical algorithms. Another layer of the sedatives crumbled under the assault. Prowl's vision finally cleared, the rumble of his own spark-beat no longer a distressing, low-pitched dirge.

"Prowl, stop it! Kill your adaptive defences. Now!"

More alert than he had been since he first woke, aware of the rising conflicts in his logic circuits, Prowl obeyed the command. He was immediately glad he had as the conflict eased. He felt comfortable now, as if cushioned on the surface of a lubricant bath now rather than trying to force his way through it. He turned back to the third mech in the room and felt the structure of his world tremble despite the tranquiliser codes in his systems.

Ratchet muttered under his breath, skirting the edge of the med-berth until he was once again in Prowl's line of sight. Prowl looked from the medic to Jazz and back again. He vented a sigh, feeling cool air ease his overheating systems, and spoke with an entirely artificial calm.

"I can see dead people."

Quite why that remark provoked near-identical smirks from both Ratchet and Jazz, Prowl would never know. The medic cleared his vents in a cough, raising a hand to hide the expression, and shook his head.

"Well, obviously. Though Primus knows why." Ratchet spun on his pedes, a finger stabbing out in the direction of Jazz. The saboteur's spectre froze, half-way through the act of pushing himself off the berth. "You! Sit!"

"C'mon, Ratch! Y'know leanin' 'gainst things is easier than sittin'."

"As if that makes any sense!" Ratchet huffed air through his vents. "Lean then, just don't overdo it."

Prowl's processor churned, trying to accommodate what he was witnessing. It was several micro-klicks before he gave in to the enticing whispers of the sedative programming and stopped fighting. Ratchet had spoken to Jazz, and that was as much permission as the dazed tactician needed.

"You look tired," he observed, concerned despite everything. Despite the constant, inescapable knowledge that Jazz was beyond physical distress.

"Yeah." Jazz eased himself off the berth and leaned against it with a shrug. "Interactin' with things like that? Guess it kinda takes a lot outta me." The ghost grinned, and the expression was spark-breakingly familiar. "Lit'rally!"

Prowl couldn't help it. He smiled back and, for the first time since he first heard the news that shook his world, the expression was completely genuine.

* * *

"It began, as so many things did, with Mission City." Optimus Prime didn't shudder as he spoke the words, but Prowl noticed the stillness – the cost of that deliberate effort _not_ to react. Ratchet flinched. Jazz looked distant, slender claws ghosting over his mid-riff as his face twisted in remembered pain.

Prowl felt his spark twist, his grief still raw and close to the surface, despite the sight of his friend on the berth beside him. Ratchet had allowed the tactician to sit, easing him up and checking he was stable before releasing him. Prowl accepted the fussing without protest. His optics and his attention remained fixed to the eerie shimmer of Jazz's frame, only straying for micro-klicks at a time. The half-breem it had taken for Ratchet to settle and Optimus to join them wasn't nearly long enough to come to terms with the vision in front of him.

Optimus vented a soft sigh, showing his friends and officers a weariness he wouldn't reveal to any other Cybertronian.

"Jazz has always been one of the most alive, most determined mechs I've known. Finding his broken frame on the battlefield was almost as difficult as accepting the loss of the All-Spark." He glanced sidelong at his lieutenant's ghostly form, his optics sad but fond. "It shouldn't have surprised me to learn he did not go quietly."

Jazz managed a grin, but to Prowl's experienced optics there was an uneasy tension in his posture. Despite his protest, the blue-white mech had settled back onto the berth. He truly did seem weary, although how that was possible Prowl had no idea. The… ghost?... spectre?... Jazz… shook his head. "There were too much I hadn't done, y'know? Too many things... things I hadn't said. Primus might be callin' me home, and a mech can't 'xactly say no t' the Big Guy, but that didn't mean I hadta shout hurrah, or that I wasn't gonna let 'im know how I felt."

Ratchet rolled his optics, and Prowl felt a smile tug at the corner of his lip-plates, his door-wings hitching a little higher. It was all-too-easy to imagine Jazz berating their creator-god. His amusement, though, was moderated by confusion. The saboteur could hardly have been the first in their long war to die angry and unprepared. Optimus read the question on his faceplates.

"It was a unique time and place." Prime leaned back against Ratchet's desk, his optics, like Prowl's, resting on Jazz. "Everything pivoted on the ending of the Mission City battle – for Cybertronian and human alike. If Lord Primus was ever close by, grieving his children's fall, it was on that day. The power of the All-Spark was released from its physical constraints even as Jazz's spark… guttered."

Ratchet flinched again. The sharp plates of his external armour flared, the unconscious spinning of his wrist-saw drawing a rumble of comfort from their Prime.

"I couldn't do anything. Jazz slipped away just as I got to him. I couldn't…." The medic's fists clenched at his sides. His vents cycled hard and his optics dimmed for a moment before brightening.

Ratchet uncurled his finger-servos with visible effort and nodded towards the silver-blue mech. "Best we can work out, this one was right there, bridging the way to the Well, pleading with Primus and the All-Spark and anyone who would listen, when the All-Spark's energy was looking for a way back to the Source. It jumped right through him and burned a kind of, ah, conduit on its way to the Well…" He waved a hand vaguely, as if trying to frame something that had never had a physical shape in the first place. "…A rift."

Optimus Prime nodded. The big mech glanced at Prowl and then turned back to the quiet spectre. Jazz seemed subdued, shaken by the account of his own demise. The silver-blue form glanced up, meeting Prime's optics for a moment and nodding an acknowledgement of the comfort he saw there, as Optimus picked up the explanation.

"The humans noticed it first. Lennox's men started reporting 'poltergeist activity'."

Prime paused, giving his sedated tactician time to connect to the base network and locate the definition. Prowl's door-wings flared in surprise. The word itself was unfamiliar, the meaning far less so than he anticipated.

"An unpredictable spirit, prone to sudden noises or moving objects unasked, sometimes with helpful intent, sometimes at random and sometimes for mischievous effect." Prowl raised a brow ridge as he finished his recitation, his optics steady.

Sitting at their focus, Jazz's expression was torn between indignation and amusement.

"I resent the assumptions you're makin', mech."

Prowl's arms folded, his gaze unflinching.

"But do you refute them?"

Ratchet snorted. His plating settled. The tension he'd shown while talking of Mission City eased from his frame.

"Guilty as charged," the medic smirked, one finger-servo stabbing in Jazz's direction. "Took a couple of months for the nuisance to show himself, but he's been around ever since."

Prowl cycled his optics. The sedative haze was still keeping him afloat on a calm sea, but the waves were building. His voice came out dryer than he intended – not precisely disbelieving, but flat with shock.

"And now the legions of the Cybertronian dead walk the green hills of Earth?"

Jazz laughed, the sound rich and musical as he too relaxed.

"Nah. It's harsh t'say it, but it's kinda been a tough few kilovorns. Most folks ain't too sorry t'see the back of all this." Jazz's waving servos took in not just the medical bay, but the world beyond and the eons of warfare that had brought their species to the brink of extinction. "Y'know what I mean? They did their bit and now they're okay to rest up an' move on, an' be one with the Well of Sparks 'till the Big Guy sends them for another go 'round. Ain't many as awkward as me."

Ratchet's muttered "Thank Primus!" earned him a smirk from Jazz. The saboteur shrugged.

"Just a few of us with… well, unfinished business."

The hesitation was uncharacteristic. The barest suggestion of a frown creased Prowl's brow as he looked at his friend. Then the sedatives did their work and broke the processing chain that unsettled him, leaving only a tremor in his door-wings and a mild dissatisfaction in its wake. He tried to focus.

"Sunstreaker?"

"I noticed y' noticin' Sides' anger issues." Jazz met his optics, a sombre glint in his visor. "Having Sunny back like this – it ain't the same, not really, but it's helpin'."

"Cliffjumper?"

That got another chuckle. Jazz shook his head and Ratchet scowled.

"We knew the mech was determined to see the end this war." The medic cycled his optics and vents. "Fighting it single-handed, if necessary. I don't think we realised just how serious he was."

"Lord Primus has his reasons." Optimus Prime's deep rumble was full of tolerant humour. "It is, perhaps, harder for some than for others to find peace."

Prowl cycled his optics, blinking away the question of the mini-bot for another day. There was another mech, short in stature but lithe and graceful beyond Cliffjumper's dreams, that occupied his thoughts.

"And I'm sure you are grateful, Optimus, for Jazz's unfailing commitment to the Autobot cause."

If Prowl had been free of the sedatives, if his processor had been clocking at full speed and his tactical algorithms unconstrained, he might have followed up on the strange expression that passed across Jazz's face. He could count the times he had seen the mech visibly embarrassed, uncertain and – most rare of all – shy, on his servos, despite their vorns of acquaintance. To see all three emotions at once writ clear across the spectre's faceplates made Prowl's tanks churn in a way he couldn't explain.

Even under the influence of Ratchet's medical codes, Prowl struggled to find words of comfort, or at least acknowledgement. His servo lifted in unconscious effort, half-extended towards a flickering frame he was far from sure he could touch.

"Optimus? Ratchet?" A new voice shattered the moment. Prowl's servo dropped back to the berth as Colonel William Lennox entered the room, head tilted back to crane up at his colleagues. "Any news on… Oh! Prowl." Lennox grinned, and Prowl's door-wings readily detected the anxiety markers coming off the organic, and the way the man's muscle tension eased at the sight of him. "Good to see you up! We were all sort of worried when you got caught in that missile blast."

"The blast…" Prowl repeated, uncertain.

"That's your cover story." The familiar grin was back on Jazz's face, his head cocked to one side as he looked down at the human. "No need t' let the younglings know it was me screwin' with your processor, right?"

Ratchet vented a quiet, irritated sigh. Optimus didn't react, his faceplates turned away from the ghostly saboteur. Lennox didn't even seem to notice. The human's eyes slid straight past the berth where Jazz sat without pausing. Prowl startled, his expression asking a question he didn't date put into words. The grin faded a little, a melancholy note drifting into Jazz's voice.

"Nah, he can't hear me. Can't see me either, or the others. Like I said, it ain't the same. No one's in on the fun, 'cept the mechs at Mission City and the ones who got a blast of matrixy-goodness in Egypt. And you."

"Prowl's fine." Ratchet spoke across Jazz without looking at him, the art of ignoring the saboteur in public obviously long since perfected. "I'm keeping him off the roster another half-orn though."

"But… why?" Prowl spoke to Jazz rather than to his medic, the sedative coding still in his system making the two conversations impossible to separate.

Optimus Prime had no such problem. The big mech's optics twinkled as he glanced around the room, taking in both the wandering spark of his lieutenant and the valued comrade oblivious to Jazz's presence.

"The reasons of Lord Primus are unknowable to common mechs – as are those of Ratchet. Some things happen simply because they must."


	2. Chapter 2

**Part Two**

Prowl's first day on official duty came as a relief to more than just himself. The unit's mechs breathed a sigh of relief as much to see the duty roster rearranged as to hear the reassuring and familiar tones of their Second in Command. Sideswipe might be a fine warrior and a bright officer, but he had a lot still to learn about matching mechs to their strengths. The humans of NEST were simply grateful that something could distract Prowl from the intent study of them that he'd indulged in over the last week. Watching the training exercises, of course, constituted essential intelligence gathering, and not even Ratchet had tried to ban him from such light work. Monitoring the humans off-duty was part of that too – a chance to assess their reactions in unexpected and emotional situations as well as regimented ones.

It was also quickly developing into a hobby. It was easy to see the regard in which Jazz, Ratchet and Optimus all held these frail organics. As he grew accustomed to them and learned to read their small faces, Prowl too had begun to enjoy life lived to the rapid beat of a human pulse, and even to somewhat appreciate the media suggestions and popular culture references that seemed to spill from Jazz in a constant stream.

Only an opportunity to talk to Jazz himself – impossible in front of the oblivious humans – could draw Prowl away from his surveillance. That, or the tempting lure of several years' of hitherto unseen tactical reports.

"Ain't it time you get y'self some fuel and some 'charge?"

"I can't stop now. There's too much to do."

"I know."

The quiet response broke Prowl's concentration in a way the well-known routine of Jazz's first suggestion hadn't. The tactician cycled his optics, a little startled himself to find he'd been working for almost seventeen Earth hours without a break.

The familiarity of the moment was actually disorientating. For a klick or two, as Prowl's tactical processor worked through a last few thousand simulations based on recent intelligence reports, he was back in a time vorns past.

How many long joors had Jazz spent in Prowl's various offices, teasing, distracting and bouncing ideas off him, between spells of letting the tactician work in companiable silence? How many times had it only been Jazz's prompts that reminded Prowl of the needs of his frame, elevating his oft-ignored status updates to conscious attention?

Just for that brief moment, Jazz was alive and Prowl was home and all was right with the world. And then Prowl looked up into faceplates drawn in shimmering light. He saw servos that clenched and unclenched restlessly, unable to hold the energon ration the saboteur would once have fetched rather than merely suggesting. His straining door-wings searched in vain for the energy field he was more familiar with than any in existence. The bare hint of spark-resonance they could detect was a cold and distant thing.

Jazz would never fetch him energon again. He'd never sit in front of the vid-screen in the rec room, laughing and joking and getting mildly overcharged on high-grade. He'd never throw a friendly arm around a mech's shoulder, or drop into recharge leaning against whoever was closest, or face down a challenge with his own unique combination of style, humour and deadly threat.

Prowl looked up into Jazz's visor and knew that his friend felt it too – that nothing could ever be the same.

Jazz shook his head. His pensive expression cleared, hidden by the mask he showed to the world at large.

"Still the workaholic, eh?"

It was hard to refute. The office was dark, lit equally by an inadequate fluorescent tube and the ethereal radiance that spilled from his friend's frame. Outside the thin-walled office set aside for Prowl, the main hangar had quietened as the humans settled into their night shift. Inside, Prowl hadn't noticed the time passing, his attention captured by the administrative work neglected in his absence, and the occasional interjection by Jazz. It hadn't occurred to him to rest.

He'd been equally oblivious to the effects of the long session on his companion. Prowl frowned, subjecting Jazz to a quick inspection, noting the pale shimmer of the ghost's frame and the tension he couldn't entirely hide.

"You need rest as well."

"I'm fine, Prowler."

The tactician raised a brow-ridge, his door-wings flaring wide. "You're tired."

"I'm _fine_. Not like stickin' around's gonna kill me."

Prowl's door-wings shuddered. He steadied them, venting a sigh as he tried to study his friend without annoying him further.

The spectre had been present more in the last week than he was in a normal month, or so Ratchet said, and it was showing. Appearing, or manifesting, or whatever it was the lingering sparks did, seemed to be truly difficult. Enough so that only Sunstreaker, Cliffjumper and Jazz put in something approaching frequent appearances. A couple of others had been seen a single time, so Prowl was told – amongst them Ironhide, who'd manifested to push Prime out of harm's way and then spend a solid hour lecturing Optimus on defensive technique before vanishing from the battlefield for good.

"Will Ironhide ever return?"

Jazz's visor flickered. He frowned at Prowl, startled by the impulsive question. The ghostly frame relaxed as he shrugged.

"Nah. Old 'Hide just wanted t' remind Optimus he's runnin' without a bodyguard now. Job done. He's gone rockin' on t' the Well." Jazz paused, expression distant. "Que too."

Prowl's tank churned. He nodded, keeping his faceplates neutral and his door-wings steady. It was hard to remember what had happened to the gentle inventor, and the way Ironhide was betrayed. Harder still with the official reports still fresh in his processor.

"I'm glad they have found peace," he said, and meant it. "And troubled that you have not." He paused, venting deeply before releasing the air in a long sigh. "Why are you still here, Jazz?"

Jazz stared at him. The mech's lip-plates worked, as if trying out the shapes of words. A thousand expressions flickered across his faceplates, all come and gone too quickly for even Prowl to read. Jazz's optics slid down to the Prowl's desk, and then off to one side, as if seeing through the walls and taking in the whole NEST operation.

Prowl's door-wings quivered, the vibration growing as the moment stretched out between them. It was tight, painful, far from comfortable silence they were accustomed to. Prowl's spark throbbed in his chest. His vents whirred, unnaturally loud without Jazz's there to balance them. The thought of not having the saboteur by his side, of being alone amidst the crowds on Earth, sent a stabbing pain through processor and spark. The devastating sense of loss he'd felt, and never truly understood, on hearing of Jazz's death still lurked at the back of his processor, and part of him truly wanted to turn away, to change the subject and pretend he'd never raised it.

Another part of him couldn't stand the thought of his closest friend and companion in pain. If Jazz needed this…

The saboteur's spectre turned back to him, faceplates blank as he subjected Prowl to a rapid and thorough visual inspection. Jazz had been head of Prime's Special Operations unit since before the first humans raised their eyes to the stars. He read Prowl's concern, uncertainty and fear in a single glance.

"Maybe I'm here for you?" Jazz smiled, a little melancholy, but with honest humour in the expression, as Prowl shrugged his door-wings in the equivalent of a human eye-roll. "Hey, who else is gonna make sure you take your ration?"

"Jazz…."

"Relax, Prowler. I got some things I need t' work out, that's all. Ain't the moment. Not yet. Need t' make my plans and pick my time. You ain't gonna get rid of me anytime soon."

The spectre turned away, pacing a few steps before glancing back over his shoulder.

"Y'know what? Maybe you're right. Could do with a break. Later, Prowler. And get some recharge!"

Jazz faded from view before Prowl could even finish his protest. The tactician watched as his friend's shimmer ebbed, as the glints and highlights that made up Jazz's outline became transparent and then vanished completely.

The office was quite suddenly smaller, emptier, than it had ever seemed before.

Standing, Prowl deactivated his computer terminal and stretched out his door-wings to loosen the kinks. It was time to fetch a ration, he decided. And then, well, maybe recharge wasn't such a bad idea.

* * *

"Ever wonder what you'll do after the war?"

The rock platform Prowl had commandeered as a seat was cool and damp in the night air. Jazz's spectral form, sprawled on its back beside him, lit the outcrop with a cold blue-white light. The warmer blue glow of Prowl's optics mingled with that radiance, brightening in his surprise and almost eclipsing the starlight they were here to observe.

Jazz lay with his hands folded behind his helm, his visor tilted up at the dark sky above. Prowl considered his friend, his expression carefully blank. The soft music spilling from Prowl's speakers – familiar now after nearly two Earth-years providing his friend that service – drifted across the still air. He let a chorus rise and fall before he answered the question.

"The last time you asked me that question the Towers still stood beneath Cybertron's skies."

Jazz hummed a note of agreement. "You told me you'd serve Prime until the Lord Protector was brought t' sanity, and then go home an' back t' bein' an enforcer."

That day seemed almost to belong to another life now. The mechs who held that conversation had been young and naïve. They'd had no way of knowing that the conflict sweeping their world would rage for eons and take them imaginably far from home.

Prowl dimmed his optics, drawing air through his vents, while his door-wings trembled behind him.

"Then Praxus fell." The music from his speakers died, both mechs sharing a moment of respectful silence before the melody started again, a low lament floating on the breeze. "You never asked again."

They both knew why. The world they'd known had fallen into the ruins of Prowl's home city. After that, not even Jazz, for all his unfailing optimism, could envisage them surviving a war that seemed without end.

Not, is seemed, until now.

Jazz pushed himself up on one elbow, his visor tilted in Prowl's direction.

"Three years since Chicago, Prowl. How many Decepticons're left on Earth, or – Pit! – within half a kiloparsec: a dozen here, twenty more maybe? What are they gonna do? Megatron's gone, an' Screamer, an' even Shocks. Roundin' up the rabble won't take forever. The three that came t' say hello when you arrived were the last t' put up a decent fight."

Jazz paused, settling back with his servos tucked behind his helm. "Cyberton's gone, Primus knows where, but we got a chance at a new start here." The former lieutenant squinted at his friend, the corner of his lip-plates twitching into a wry smile. "So, watcha gonna do?"

"I… I don't know."

Door-wings twitching, Prowl gave the question its first serious consideration in eons. The cool evening breezes of Earth, so alien after the stillness of Cybertron, played across his delicate sensors. Even here, in the sparse scrubland of the NEST base, a myriad of insects, birds and other provided a background hum beneath Prowl's music. They crawled across dirt in equal parts organic and silicate, fine grains of both finding its way under plating and into Prowl's vents. Overhead, Earth's thick atmosphere turned a majestic sweep of stars into a join-the-dots puzzle that stimulated even the tactician's imagination, and set their steady glow dancing in the night.

It was hard to imagine a planet much less like distant Cybertron. Was this really a world they could call home? If it were, what would that mean, for Prowl, for Jazz, and for them all?

"Peace?" The word tasted alien on Prowl's lip-plates. He shook his head, and tried again, forcing the uncertain note away. "Peace."

"Never thought I'd live t' see th' day."

The saboteur tried to mask the truth behind his joke with a grin. The expression was almost convincing, amidst the highlights and reflections of his glowing faceplates. Almost.

It wasn't often, after two years to grow accustomed to its consequences, that the reality of his friend's situation crashed in on Prowl. Most of the time, even Jazz seemed not to give it much thought. The ghost's struggle to interact with matter did not extend to the unconscious act of sitting, or lying or leaning against a handy support. His inability to send or receive comm signals didn't stop him making his feelings clear, and his limited audience just incited him to more frequent and less reverent commentary in mixed-company meetings.

Glimpses of the melancholy that lay behind Jazz's façade were far rarer. Prowl was aware of it, of course. He'd had seen his friend's sad smile when new arrivals to Earth were welcomed, oblivious to the watching saboteur. He'd sensed the erstwhile lieutenant's frustrated impotence when the Autobots discussed battle tactics with their NEST allies, or even just the nuances of human politics. More than once, and most often when Bumblebee or Sideswipe were occupied with the duties they'd inherited from Prime's lieutenant, Prowl had come across Jazz sitting quiet and still in the rec room, utterly alone in the crowd.

To catch brief sight of such unguarded expressions was one thing, and it wrenched Prowl's spark every time. To hear that frustration and loss in Jazz's voice was quite another.

Prowl reached out without thinking, his finger-servos stopping just short of touching Jazz's arm in comfort. The chill of the contact, the energy drain that seemed to draw heat from Prowl's very spark, would hardly comfort either mech.

Jazz's visor broke contact with Prowl's optics. He stood, the lithe silver-blue frame flowing between seated and upright in a graceful movement. The spectre's head tilted up, his visor resting on the twinkling stars. Prowl's servo dropped into the empty space between them, his fist clenching as it did so. He nodded slowly, trying to bring his processor back to the original question.

"Even if the end is in sight, the remaining Decepticons will occupy us for some time to come. Ensuring our people are safe from the humans will take rather longer."

This time the smirk Jazz threw over his shoulder was genuine. "Didn't think you'd've missed that. These humans might be small but they kinda make up for it in attitude. Remind me of 'Jumper that way." Jazz paced a few steps and then turned, his helm once again tilted towards the tactician. The ghost opened his mouth to speak and then paused, a strange expression flickering across his face. "Now there's a spark who'll be glad to see the last Decepticon outta the way."

The expression was gone before Prowl could question it, Jazz's servo waving a vague dismissal of the point as he resumed his pacing. The tactician shook his head.

"Be that as it may, Optimus will have need of my skills even after the Decepticon threat is eliminated."

"Political tactics, rather than military ones, eh? Bit of a departure for you, mech."

Prowl's ambivalence spilled into his frame, his door-wings swayed forward and back again. He vented a sigh, one hand coming up to massage his chevron. "But a necessary one. It may be many years before I am free to rest. In the mean time I will serve where I can. To do less would be to fail in my duty: to our people and our to our Prime."

Jazz sighed, the sound unnatural without the hum of vents behind it. The spectre dropped back down to sit on the rock platform beside Prowl, a careful arms-length from the tactician.

"Yeah, I know," he said, voice soft. "And you wouldn't be you if you didn't feel that way, Prowler. I know that too."

"Jazz?"

"Humans live fast, Prowler. Die fast. Change fast too."

"I know." This time it was Prowl who murmured the words. "I fear you are correct. We will face a new paradigm sooner than I ever believed possible."

"We got a while yet, and – I shouldn't be tellin' you this – but the Big Guy's got a plan. The future ain't nothin' for a mech t' fear."

Jazz's visor dimmed, the spectre's entire form flickering as he settled back to his stargazing. Prowl studied him for a long moment before turning back to the stars himself. The human music Jazz preferred, forgotten for the length of their discussion emerged once more from Prowl's speakers. His friend murmured his appreciation, musical voice merging with the melody.

The conversation lapsed, the two mechs comfortable with the silence between them, both lost in thought.

Lord Primus had a plan? Prowl knew the thought should excite him, that it should relieve the shapeless fears that hovered at the edge of the tactician's processor.

Beside him, Jazz sang quietly, echoing the chorus of a human song about love and loss. So human a thing – to capture the deepest of emotions in words and tame it in the process. Prowl knew to do so was far beyond his skill.

Even if he could articulate his feelings clearly in his own processor, even if he could find the words to share them with his friend, how would Jazz react? The dream of an ordered, conflict-free future was what Prowl had craved even as an enforcer. Now, the culmination of his life's unfinished work was a prospect he viewed with unease, or even fear.

No. Not the completion of his own work. The completion of his friend's.

Prowl could see hope of peace for their people, and all the more clearly so with each iteration of his tactical algorithms. For Prowl himself, there would be no peace without Jazz by his side.

* * *

"I wouldn't." The human soldier chuckled, reaching out to lay a friendly punch on his comrade's arm. Both looked up at the door of the Autobots' medbay, keeping just out of range of its opening sensors. "Old Ratchet is talking to himself again."

It was curious, Prowl considered, how quickly Cybertronians had become not only acceptable to the humans they worked with, but oddly humanised.

The five years since Prowl himself made Earth-fall, ten since Mission City, was hardly a noticeable time in Cybertronian terms. The tactician had known single battles that lasted longer. Admittedly, looked at from the perspective of a shorter, human lifespan, the interval must take on a different significance. It was long enough, it seemed, to have bred familiarity, and perhaps even the slightest hint of contempt.

"Ahem?"

The two soldiers snapped to attention. They blinked up at the black and silver Autobot towering above them with salutes and the immediate respect due to his rank. He couldn't help noticing the stress hormones that flooded their organic systems as they wondered whether he'd heard the comment. Amongst the humans and younger Autobots – 'the younglings', even to sentients whose ancestors hadn't left the trees when they were sparked – more than one older mech had acquired a reputation for talking to themselves. Prowl was far from unaware that he numbered amongst them, although he'd done so far less than he'd prefer of late.

It was his latest search for Jazz, in fact, that had brought the tactician to Ratchet's door. Looking down at the NEST soldiers, Prowl crossed his arms over his bumper. He raised a brow-ridge, moderating the unconscious flare of his door-wings to ease the men's nerves.

"I assume you had a reason for being here, gentlemen?"

"Ah… Sir, yes, sir. Our physicals, sir?"

After the initial wobble, the man's voice was even and unafraid. Prowl nodded in approval as much as acknowledgement. Considering, the tactician glanced at the door. The strident tone of Ratchet's voice was audible through the door, even to human ears. There were precisely three sentient beings on base capable of inspiring that level of irritation in the medic. The intangible, unsee-able nature of two of those three would hardly do anything to enhance perceptions of Ratchet's rationality, or Prowl's.

Scanning the soldiers for their identities, the Autobot Second encoded them in a message and fired it off, before inclining his helm to the humans in question.

"Ratchet will send for you when he is ready."

"Sir, thank you, sir."

Neither man argued, both nodding to the enigmatic tactician before vacating the corridor with a haste that verged on the impolite.

Prowl watched them go, his door-wings trembling with amusement. Both men were relatively new arrivals. They might have picked up the comfortable way their NEST comrades discussed the Autobots, but it would take longer to get over the instinctive awe of confronting one, and even Autobots sometimes took vorns before they could relax around Prowl himself.

Of course, there were exceptions to every rule. Jazz had made it his mission to get to know the then-enforcer from their very first orn as colleagues.

Jazz's habit of distracting him from his work was something Prowl had resented for vorns, and merely tolerated for a near-eternity. Strange, then, how much he'd missed it during their vorns apart. Shocking, how bereft he'd been when it appeared he'd never experience again.

Now, he struggled to picture his life without Jazz's visits. As much pleasure as he derived from plotting Optimus Prime's path through the complexities of human politics, and managing the Autobot's growing portfolio of additional interests, the distractions had actually become welcome. The silver-blue mech's absence for even a day or two niggled at Prowl's concentration. When the spark-ghost was absent for a full week, even the satisfaction and fulfillment Prowl derived from his endless diplomatic work could not compete with the urge to track him down.

Speaking of which… Prowl dismissed the human soldiers from his processor. He dialled up his audio receivers. If Ratchet was with one of the twins rather than the erstwhile saboteur, not even Prowl was prepared to brave the medic's ire.

"Jazz… this can't go on."

"Leave it, Ratch!"

The snarl stopped Prowl's hand halfway to the door control. He'd heard Jazz angry before, but the weary, melancholic note in his voice was new.

"For how long? It's been six months since we rounded up the last Decepticon on Earth. Almost two since anyone's seen Cliffjumper."

The former was hardly news to the sub-commander of the Autobot armed forces. The latter gave him pause. Prowl had noticed that the mini-bot's spectre was unusually quiet, of course, but had it really been so long? The thought was a startling one, and disturbing too. If the last battle of their long conflict had really come and gone, was Cliffjumper finally at rest? If so, what did Ratchet mean by pointing it out to another of their ghosts?

The medic's sigh was audible even through the door. "You can't wait forever. You need to tell him, Jazz. To explain."

"Optimus said it was my choice when, y'know, mech." That, at least, was calmer, even if Jazz's voice still lacked its usual cheer. "He's got his reasons for being here, just like I've got mine. Decepticons or not, that ain't changed. It's not time yet."

"And when will it be? How long will you wait?"

"Long as it takes!" It was too easy to image Jazz waving a dismissive servo, his visor blazing. Prowl leaned forward, resting the chevron on his brow against the door as he focused on the words inside. The fact that he was eavesdropping didn't even occur to him as he strained to hear his friend's quiet words. "I waited a dozen kilovorns, Ratch. I waited half a lifetime. Another few Earth years isn't too much t' ask."

Ratchet hesitated long enough to make Prowl uneasy. His finger-servos were already brushing the door controls when the medic finally spoke.

"I just wish I could make this easier for you."

"Nothin' worth doin's ever easy, Ratch." Prowl's door-wings slumped, their joints sending a stab of discomfort through his frame. Until the return of laughter to Jazz's voice eased his concern, the tactician hadn't even realised how tense he'd become. The saboteur's mood had always been mercurial. Since the spark faded from his frame, it had become more unpredictable still. "I'll ask when he's ready t' hear the question. When he's free to answer it. Won't do no-one any good if I force it when he ain't. Trust me t' know my mech that well, at least."

Ratchet's snort was distinctly uninformative. Jazz chuckled.

"Sorry, Ratch. You ain't gettin' rid of me anytime soon. I'm goin' nowhere for a good while yet."

"_Prowl?"_ Optimus Prime's voice on the comm-link startled Prowl out of his near-daze. His optics brightened, his door-wings and plating flaring in shame and surprise as he realised what he was doing. _"I know you're off duty, but I was wondering if you have those resource projections the colonel was asking for earlier?"_

"_I… ah… Yes, Optimus. I'll bring them to you at once."_

There was a thoughtful pause. _"Is everything all right, Prowl?"_

Alone and unseen, Prowl shook his head. He was already moving away from the medical bay door, determined to put distance between him and it before either Jazz or Ratchet sought him out and realised what he'd done. The discussion he'd overheard looped again and again through his processor, baffling and troubling him. Who must Jazz talk to, and about what? Was this something Prowl could help his friend with, and, if so, why had the spectre confided in Ratchet rather than the tactician? Why could he not even hazard a guess as to the context so clearly understood by both participants the conversation?

"_Prowl?"_

Prowl shook his head, consciously terminating the query algorithms before responding to his Prime's repeated question.

He knew the saboteur well enough to be sure that attempting to force a confidence would backfire catastrophically. Jazz would come to him if he wanted or needed assistance, Prowl was sure of that. If he did, if Jazz asked for help, Prowl would move Pit and Well to ensure his friend got it. Otherwise, Prowl could only wait the mech out and offer what comfort and support he might. As Jazz had said, a few Earth years hardly counted as a long wait for either one of them.

And in the meantime, the tactician would draw comfort of his own from what he'd heard. _'I'm goin' nowhere'_, Jazz had said, and for all his concern, Prowl's spark sang with relief at the words.

"_I'm fine."_ Prowl told Prime, speaking only the honest truth. _"Just a small distraction."_

Laughter didn't travel well over the comm-links, but Prowl knew amusement when he heard it.

"_Jazz?" _Optimus asked.

Prowl cycled his optics, venting deeply. _"Is there any other?"_

* * *

"Prove it."

A broad, knowing grin spread across Sideswipe's face. It was a familiar expression – one that admitted to guilt without words. Sideswipe knew that he'd been caught. He knew too that Prowl, Ratchet and Optimus Prime would never be able to prove he was culpable.

The mere fact that no other mech in the history of the Autobot armed forces had ever been capable of such audacity wouldn't justify the severest punishments. In the absence of further evidence, the swordsmech was more than ready to take a lesser sanction. The amusement value of watching the _entire_ human race wake to find their online information and entertainment pages transposed to another language was, it seemed, worth that much.

Sideswipe rolled forward a few metres on his pede-tyres, and then scooted in a tight circle, too hyped to stand still. It was an old behaviour pattern – one the tactician hadn't seen since the twins stood in an office long gone, waiting for his verdict with a dangerous mixture of trepidation and exhilaration.

Yes, Prowl knew this smile well, and he rejoiced to see it. The ten years since he joined Prime's unit on Earth had been far too long without a prank of Sideswipean proportions to lighten the mood.

"Prowl?" Prime tried to put a stern note in his rumble, but Sideswipe smiled brightly at him nonetheless. Optimus had been fighting laughter ever since an irate Brigadier General Lennox thumped on his bumper to rouse him from recharge. Sideswipe had no problem reading their Prime's temper, any more than he did with the watching Ratchet.

Judging by the exasperated look Lennox turned on the group, fifteen years in Prime's close company had taught their human ally to read the mood with nearly as much ease.

Prime's Second-in-Command schooled his faceplates to neutrality, careful to keep his door-wings from quivering with his own amusement.

"There are few mechs on Earth with the requisite level of hacking and programming ability. Of those, Sideswipe has by far the most extensive record of past offences against procedure and discipline. The audacity and public nature of this 'prank' is consistent with his established _modus operandi_, as is the largely non-malign nature of the, ah, amendments made. The pre-programmed reversion of each server to norm at ten AM local time – before the working day was far advanced – also suggests a mech with a strong sense of responsibility, probably with experience of human interaction at officer rank."

Ratchet snorted, content to heckle from the sidelines. He jerked his head at the circling swordsmech without even attempting to conceal his amusement. "Even that one had to wise up sometime. Least he had the wits not to sign his name this time."

The tactician folded his arms, ignoring the interjection. "While there is, as yet, no direct evidence linking Sideswipe to this incident, Prime, the circumstantial evidence is compelling." He paused, a tremor reaching his wings despite his efforts. Glancing at the human by Prime's feet, he chose his words with care. "I would add that certain programming patterns and internal evidence suggest he may have secured assistance from another skilled hacker, and would likely have required at least one, if not two stealthy lookouts to give him time to access the main communications servers." Prowl looked around him, brow-ridges raised. "I note that the two most likely suspects are conspicuous by their absence."

Except, Prowl realised, as Optimus Prime launched into a speech that mingled approbation with his own delight at seeing Sideswipe so relaxed, that wasn't quite true.

A flash of white-blue from the doorway caught the tactician's optic. He turned a deliberately forbidding look in that direction, fully expecting to meet the visor of a sheepish Jazz. Instead he saw a taller, broader frame, elaborate head-fins framing a pale mirror of Sideswipe's features. Sunstreaker watched Prime's lecture with an expression Prowl could only describe as satisfaction, albeit one tinged with something that looked very much like regret.

Cycling his optics in surprise, Prowl took a moment to assess the situation before reacting. He'd seen Sunstreaker less often of late, and always in Sideswipe's company if he was present at all. The spectre seemed paler than Prowl remembered, although even the tactician couldn't have said whether that was truth or some trick of perception, and quieter. Maybe Sideswipe's improving mood made the presence of his long-gone brother less painful to endure. Or perhaps the weary expression Prowl glimpsed from time to time on Sunstreaker's face meant something more.

The second twin, always the more withdrawn and pensive of the two, even before his return from the Well, was staying well back. The doorframe concealed him from both his brother and their Prime. In fact, Prowl realised, of all the mechs who might perceive the spectral presence, only the Second-in-Command himself was in a position to do so.

Sunstreaker's optics glowed a deep blue against the ripple of light that made up his frame. They studied his brother intently for several klicks before rising to meet Prowl's. Sunstreaker didn't exactly smile, but his posture spoke volumes. The erstwhile frontliner jerked his helm, back towards the command corridor, and Prowl needed no words to realise what was being asked of him.

"Prime, if you'll excuse me…?"

Warming to his topic, and – Prowl was sure – also playing very much for his human audience, Prime nodded automatically. Prowl slipped away before Optimus Prime had time to think again and wonder where his Second was going. A wave of his servo had Ratchet settling back to lean against the gantry and enjoy the show. Whatever Sunstreaker wanted, Prowl was quite sure, he wouldn't appreciate an uninvited audience of his own.

* * *

Sunstreaker was gone by the time Prowl reached the corridor, and the door to the tactical office was closed. That didn't trouble him. The rules regarding just when a door would be solid enough for one of their wandering sparks to lean against, and when they would walk through it with impunity, seemed to be almost infinitely fluid. As a rule though, Sunstreaker leaned towards the latter behaviour – not seeking attention often, but making sure he'd be noticed when he did.

Sure enough, the electric blue frontliner was pacing in front of Prowl's desk when the tactician let himself into through the locked door. Here, in the smaller, dimmer space, Prowl could be sure. He'd spent enough time with Jazz – and even Sunstreaker – in this room to be certain now that Sunstreaker had faded. The highlights that picked out his form were fainter, less well defined, than before. The blue-white of his frame had become translucent, the sharp edge of Prowl's desk just barely discernable through Sunstreaker's chest and back-plates. The spectre's body language had changed too. Sunstreaker's shoulders slumped a little, his arms crossed over his chest-plates in a gesture that seemed more protective than antagonistic.

"Are you well?" The question came automatically, and Prowl didn't try to qualify it. The mechs who could see their ghostly comrades had long since adapted the meaning of such phrases to their own ends.

Sunstreaker shot him a weary smile.

"Just tired. Won't be for much longer." The ghost paused in his pacing, watching as Prowl lowered himself into the chair behind his desk. He tilted his head, leaning back against the nearest wall. "I want to say thank you."

Prowl's vents faltered. The weight with which Sunstreaker invested his words gave his tactical processor the final clue it needed to reach a conclusion. It was one that pained him as much as it gladdened him.

"Thank you?"

"For putting up with Sides and me when no one else would. For understanding us." If this had been Sideswipe, he'd have cracked a grin. Sunstreaker's lip-plates quirked with the barest hint of a smile. "Or trying to at least." He paused, shoulders heaving as if he drew in a deep vent. The hum of Prowl's system's aside, the room was silent. "Thank you for saving our lives a dozen times over. For being there for us. For being here for Sides these last few years."

There was no doubt then. Prowl nodded, expression grave.

"I am sorry, Sunstreaker, that I could not do more."

Now Sunstreaker did smile, a familiar, wry twist of his well-shaped faceplates. "Not your fault I got myself slagged. Should have known better than to try something like that without you around to pull our afts out of the Pit."

The ghost's foot tapped idly against the wall behind him. Sunstreaker seemed relaxed… or perhaps content was the better word. Accepting of his fate.

"The broken bond really messed Sides up, you know that. But he's doing better now. He's got a ways to go yet, but I think he's finally on the right track." Sunstreaker nodded firmly. "He's figured some things out. Leastways, he's not going to crack. Not yet." The blue glow of his optics cycled in a wink. "Sometimes with Sideswipe that's all you can ask for."

Again, the frontliner paused and Prowl waited him out. Sunstreaker rarely spoke this freely. Given the circumstances the tactician wasn't going to interrupt.

"I've done all I can here, Prowl. Guess Primus has decided my time is up. So I just wanted to say thanks. And goodbye."

Prowl stood, his wings flared and his expression intense in its sincerity. "Sunstreaker… it's truly been an honour to serve with you. I wish you peace and happiness in the Well."

He truly meant to leave it at that, but Sunstreaker heard the hesitation in his voice. The twins had been around Prowl longer than anyone but Jazz, Ratchet and Prime. They could read him as few others could.

"Something on your mind, Prowl?"

"Jazz knows you're leaving?"

Sunstreaker's brief nod went a long way to explaining the edge of anger and despondency Prowl had seen in his friend of late. Jazz hadn't been this unpredictable since Cliffjumper returned to the Well. Prowl's door-wings slumped, his optics dimming with grief and anxiety.

"He'll be alone."

Again, a nod from the watching frontliner.

Prowl hitched his door-wings higher, his expression deadly earnest.

"Then, Sunstreaker, I have one final request to make of you, and I hope you can forgive my boldness. Tell me: how can I help Jazz find peace?"

The spectre pushed off from the wall. He moved to the desk, his bright optics studying Prowl intently. Whatever he saw, it seemed both to amuse and frustrate him. He shook its head.

"How you can be so smart and so dumb at the same time never ceases to amaze me." Sunstreaker leaned forward over the desk. "You want to help Jazz?"

"With all my spark."

"Then when he comes to talk to you… to ask you…"

Prowl startled, his door-wings flaring behind him. The conversation he'd overheard between Jazz and Ratchet was seldom far from his processor. Somehow though, he'd never connected it to himself. The thought that Jazz might hesitate for long years to ask anything of his closest friend was a troubling one. "Jazz's question is for me?"

Sunstreaker chuckled, the sound low and rich, and all the more precious for its rarity.

"When he comes to ask, don't let that processor of yours speak for you. Answer with your spark and everything will be fine." The ghost paused, chuckle dying as he turned a serious look on the tactician. "You want to help Jazz? Don't frag this up."

The slight smile returned, Sunstreaker's helm tilting back as if he were listening to something only he could hear.

"Won't be long now. Just sorry I can't stick around to see it. Goodbye, Prowl."

Prowl nodded, swallowing back his questions, knowing he'd already pushed too far. "Goodbye Sunny. Thank you too… for everything."

Sunstreaker's form was fading by the second. He tapped his brow, his handsome faceplates lit with a joy that Prowl had never thought to see there.

"Until all are one."

The words hung in the air even after Sunstreaker was lost to sight, ringing with hope and wonder and promise.

* * *

It wasn't a city. Not yet.

The seventy-two mechs who had made Earth-fall might constitute a small town in the latter days of Cybertron, a mere village at the height of the Golden Age. General Lennox, Prowl knew, was shocked at how few of their people had made it to safety, a full twenty years after the call was sent from Mission City. The Autobot officers, who had seen the decimation of their race through eons of war, knew better than to be surprised.

Not that all hope was gone, not given the scales concerned – both in space and in time. A mere quarter vorn would only have brought the closest of their people to them. More would come, in time, although they'd never reach the numbers Lennox once expected.

In the meantime, the seventy-two were more than Prowl had dared hope for. He held his helm and door-wings high, his optics bright as they drifted from side to side. Buildings glinted in the sunlight. He let his servo-tips brush over the burnished surface of the nearest as he walked, revelling in a sight and sensation quite unlike anything created by this world's native humans. The settlement the Autobots had built, through the skill of their own servos, from materials they'd purchased by legitimate trade, might be crude, but it was nonetheless a wonder he'd not have credited just two decades before.

He'd put the broad, relaxed smile on Sideswipe's face in that same category.

"Hey, Prowl."

The junior lieutenant swept past on his pede-wheels, circling Prowl twice and setting a pair of birds aflight with the roar of his engine, before settling down to pace the tactician.

Prowl watched the birds circle, their plumage bright in the morning light. The organics danced through the air, an echo of the Seekers that once revelled in Cybertron's skies. This was different. Not better. Not worse. Just one more piece in the jigsaw that Prime was shaping into their new home.

"Sideswipe," Prowl acknowledged. "Good morning."

"Yep." Sideswipe turned on his pedes, arms widespread. The tactician smiled, enjoying the pleasure on his young friend's faceplates. Even now, it wasn't often the young officer was so carefree.

The thought brought another on its heels, one never far from Prowl's processor these days. "Have you seen Jazz this morning?"

"Nope." Sideswipe's grin faltered, just for a nano-klick. "Not for a few days now. Have _you_ seen Ratch?"

Prowl raised a brow-ridge, tilting his helm in the swordsmech's direction.

"Ratchet?"

"He sent me looking for you a half-breem back. Says he's got something to tell us. Now."

It took Sideswipe a couple of klicks to notice that Prowl was no longer by his side. Prowl had stopped, his door-wings raised and his optics concerned. "Something that won't wait until the council meeting this afternoon?"

"Prowl?"

Prowl unfroze, and the frontliner found himself suddenly trailing. "Then it is either highly urgent or highly military. Either way, we should not keep him waiting."

"Hadn't thought of that."

Sideswipe caught up within a few metres, his arm blades slipping partway out of his arm sheaths. The village council might be a new initiative – one whose biggest concern of late had been debating names for the settlement itself – but Prime's officers supported and respected the endeavour. For Ratchet to be falling back on their old morning meeting pattern now…

The command centre was a new building, matching the old NEST hangar a few miles away for scale but worlds apart in aesthetic. Ornately moulded doors opened at Prowl's approach. Friezes lined the corridors, Cybertronian glyphs scattered between artworks and sometimes shaping them. Despite his urgency, despite the swordsmech skating behind him, Prowl paused in front of the one mural that always brought him to a halt. Raising a servo, he reached out to brush gleaming face-plates and a visor wrought in silver and sapphire.

"Y'know, that thing makes me blush, ev'ry time."

"It is only right that our people remember their sacrifices." Prowl's door-wings fluttered, his optics brightening. "And you cannot blush."

Jazz was pale. Prowl saw that at a glance. The frown on Sideswipe's face, the way the lieutenant glanced between his predecessor and the corridor lights, belied the tactician's faint hope that he was imagining the difference.

The erstwhile saboteur rubbed the back of his helm, a grin on his face not quite hiding the weariness in his posture.

"Jazz." Prowl nodded a greeting. "I was growing concerned by your absence."

For a moment, Jazz's visor met his optics, the deep blue glow searching. Prowl read the acknowledgement there, and then the moment when Jazz decided to make a joke of the whole issue. The spectre stretched, his lithe form ethereal under the harsh lights.

"Guess, 'm not as sprightly as I was. Couldn't miss today though. The Big Guy keeps droppin' hints." Jazz's visor winked, his smile irreverent. "Somethin' 'bout lovin' it when a plan comes together."

Sideswipe's engine gave a startled rev. "Lord Primus watches A-Team reruns?"

The expression on Jazz's face was grave and utterly serious. "Sideswipe, Lord Primus has been here since the dawn of time. He saw the show first time 'round."

Another time, in another place, Prowl would have stopped his friend and pressed for the truth. Here and now, they had a meeting waiting.

Optimus Prime nodded a greeting to Jazz as well as Prowl and Sideswipe when they joined the party. Bumblebee warbled in surprise to see the saboteur, before throwing his oblivious companions a guilty glance. Ratchet, pacing between General Lennox on the human gantry and the bench where Bee, Dino and Roadbuster sat watching, didn't seem to notice their ghostly visitor.

Instead the medic singled out first Prowl and then Sideswipe for a pointed glare.

"Where did you go to find him? Cybertron?"

"Patience, Ratchet." Optimus Prime's murmur rumbled through the room and up through Prowl's feet. The large mech's optics rested on Ratchet, their slight dilation betraying his confusion. "Now Prowl and Sideswipe have joined us, perhaps you'd like to…"

"I had two mechs come see me this morning." Ratchet cut across Optimus with both his words and a sharp swipe of his servos. "They were worried about symptoms they'd both noticed so came together."

Optimus lowered himself onto the head chair in the chamber, his expression worried. Prowl knew the tremor in his door-wings gave away his own anxiety. Things had been going so well. The settlement was the embodiment of the safety and stability Prowl had worked for his entire life. For it to be threatened now…

He stepped forwards, arms crossed over his chestplates and optics intent. "How severe are the symptoms? What is the prognosis and the infection rate? Do we need to implement quarantine protocols?"

Ratchet's grin was wildly at odds with Prowl's staccato questions. He dismissed the intent Second-in-Command with a wave.

"Forget quarantine," he said, turning to Optimus with a warm rev of his engine. "We need to start padding corners, moving shelves up a few metres, securing the energon cookies…."

"Ratchet?" Bumblebee chirped a query, his optics on Prowl.

The tactician lowered himself onto the bench closest to Prime, his own optics wide and his door-wings trembling. Jazz's pale face seemed to fill his vision, a bright grin almost outshining the rest of him. The 'Big Guy' had something planned…? The tactician cycled his vocalisor twice before finding words.

"You don't mean…?"

Ratchet nodded. The medic laughed aloud, expression wondering. "Two! Two of them!"

"Two gifts of Primus?" Prowl insisted, needing to hear it.

Ratchet started pacing again, his excitement too vast to be contained. "It's impossible, but it's true."

"A miracle." Optimus Prime spoke in the same reverent whisper Prowl had used. "A blessing!"

"Optimus?" General Lennox's voice rose over the startled revving of engines from all six mechs present. "Want to fill in the gaps for the newbie?"

Prowl felt a smile play across his lip-plates, and suppressed it before it startled Lennox more. The general was hardly a newbie by human standards. NEST training had kept the man fit into middle age, his muscled frame still firm despite the added bulk age had brought. Even so, he was hardly the youngling he'd been when Prime first encountered him. Lennox had seen the Autobots grieve and celebrate. He'd seen them raise the settlement from barren earth, all but uninhabitable to human kind. He'd never seen them as shocked and happy as he saw them now.

"Soooo…. who's gonna give the organic the nuts an' bolts talk? Volunteers?"

Sideswipe sniggered, the reaction to Jazz's question earning him puzzled looks from half the room and amused frowns from the rest.

Prime rumbled a chuckle of his own before nodding.

"You are aware, Will, that the All-Spark has, since the dawn of time, been the source of new sparks in our population."

The reminder sobered Lennox and dampened the still tentative celebration of Prime's junior officers. The general nodded slowly. He looked around him, as if seeing through the walls and out into the too-small settlement beyond.

"You have no idea how sorry I am that it's gone."

Prime nodded an acknowledgement, the echo of old pain dimming his optics. Then his gaze fell on the still-bouncing medic and they brightened again.

"You are _not_ aware, I believe, that there was a second, far less common mechanism by which a new spark could gain sentience."

Lennox bounced to his feet, the human's eyes widening in his incredulity. "And you didn't think to mention this before?"

Prime chuckled. "It appeared to me that a one in ten million year occurrence was unlikely to trouble our relatively brief acquaintance."

"Or two in ten million."

Attention turned to Sideswipe, eyes and optics alike. The tall silver-grey mech stood with his arms crossed and expression distant. Optimus nodded a grave acknowledgement.

"Or two. Sideswipe and his brother were the last gifts Primus gave his children."

Ratchet rolled his eyes, but he stopped by Sideswipe's side, patting the young mech's arm. "For our sins."

Sideswipe spared him a half-smile, before glancing around at the incredulous expression on the faces of Roadbuster, Bumblebee and Dino. The lone twin snorted, waving a hand in their general direction.

"And _that_ would be why we didn't tell people. Can you imagine Sunny and me hanging around Simfur being venerated? Whatever Primus had in mind, it wasn't that. We just wanted to be ourselves."

"Warriors when we needed them. Humour and courage and hope when strength alone would not suffice."

Sideswipe's engine revved, comforted as much as embarrassed by the warmth in his Prime's words. The young swordsmech scowled at Prowl.

"Might have guessed you'd already know."

He cocked his head, glancing sidelong at Jazz with a question in his optics. The spectre too had settled onto a bench, although, Prowl judged, less through shock than his spark-deep weariness. The former Ops mech tapped his visor, cycling it in the equivalent of a human eye-roll. "Hacked your personal files before you'd been with us a decaorn, mech. An' I wasn't gonna keep juicy gossip like that t' myself now, was I?"

He nodded towards Prowl, laughing off the secret he'd kept for eons, from all but his closest friend. Sideswipe knew it too. His optics brightened in salute, before turning back towards the gantry. Lennox had raised his hand, the schoolboy gesture incongruous in the grey-tinged soldier.

"So someone's expecting another pair of twins?" he asked, eyes wide and face a little pale as his horizons expanded to embrace the concept.

Ratchet chuckled. "Nope. Two separate carriers. Two separate sparklings. An orn apart, at most."

Roadbuster broke off from staring at Sideswipe, to stare instead at the medic.

"That's fragging impossible!"

"Unlikely," Optimus allowed, his ageless optics glowing with an elation too intense to voice. "Unless…"

"Unless something's changed," Dino finished for him. The exotic Italian accent he'd adopted was strained and throbbed with a painful hope. Bumblebee patted his friend's back, his own optics searching the faceplates of their elders for confirmation.

"A new start?" he asked, using his own voice even as music swelled from his speakers in an echo of his more usual non-verbal communication.

Jazz chuckled, one servo tapping in time with the melody. Prowl gazed at his friend, his own happiness tinged with sorrow as his optics picked out the edge of the bench through the saboteur's pale frame.

"I love it when a plan comes together," he murmured aloud.

* * *

"Jazz."

Prowl didn't turn, didn't move. The mech was silent and invisible to Prowl's sensitive door-wings. Nonetheless, he knew the spectre was there.

In the distance, the sound of celebration carried from the settlement. The return of new life, of new hope, to their people was beyond any of their wildest dreams. The village would celebrate not only this orn, but every vorn to come, finding peace they'd not believed possible.

Prowl's spark sang for them, and ached with a grief and terror he'd last known two Earth decades before.

"Prowler."

Jazz moved awkwardly, his stiff frame a slow and clumsy contrast to his usual grace. The spectre settled beside Prowl with none of his usual banter. They sat side by side, perched on the edge of the rocky outcrop that had been their stargazing rendezvous almost as long as they'd been on Earth, the silence between them heavy with words left unspoken.

It was several breems before Prowl broke the stillness. "This is a wonderful day."

"Yep. Don't think I've ever seen Optimus so happy."

"He has endured much sorrow and led with such spark. I am truly pleased to see him joyful at last."

Jazz shifted, his pale visor reflecting the moonlight as he turned to face his companion for the first time. "An' I find you out here?"

The night sky was dark and cool. A chill breeze blew across Prowl's plating, its motion unimpeded by the spectre that glistened and wavered beside him.

Prowl tilted his helm back, seeking solace in the unchanging stars.

"I spoke to Sunstreaker before he left. I saw how he had to strain to extend his time here. I saw him fade into nothing." His optics dimmed, static flooding his vocalisor as he put words around a concept he'd scarcely dared think about. "Jazz, our people are safe. The Autobots are as secure as we can make them, the Decepticon threat gone for now, perhaps forever. Primus has granted us a new beginning, released us from the decline and fall that seemed our only fate." He paused, venting a deep sigh. "Our tasks are complete, Jazz, just as Sunstreaker's was. It hurts to see you struggle on. It hurts more that I still don't understand why."

Jazz's soft laughter held no humour.

"I know. An' you're right, y'know? This sparkling thing… well, I guess things change. Things like the rift." The spectre shifted, restless despite the weary ache of his frame. Jazz looked away, not meeting his friend's optics. "It's closing, Prowl. The Big Guy says m' time's just about up."

"Really, Jazz, such irreverence…"

"Prowl."

Prowl shuddered, his voice faltering into silence. He wasn't surprised his companion had seen his protest for the delaying tactic it was. He'd been dreading this conversation for years, if not decades. Venting deeply, he forced his door-wings out wide and steady, drawing confidence from the façade. Jazz needed to reach catharsis, and Prowl would accept any sacrifice to see he got it. Even one that threatened to tear his own spark apart.

"Prowler," Jazz repeated, his warm vocalisor tight with strain. His servo stroked across his midriff, curved talons flexing. "Back there… in Mission City… I was so angry, and so afraid. I yelled at Primus, at the All-Spark, at anyone that would listen. The Well was pulling at me, and I held on with all my spark."

"I know."

Prowl reached out in pure, instinctive comfort. His hand brushed Jazz's, and he shuddered again. His spark strained in his frame, reaching out for the other, trying to lend warmth where there was none.

The cold of the night was nothing to the chill of the grave.

Jazz drew in a choking vent, his visor flickering. It was a long few klicks before the spectre drew back, breaking the contact between them.

"Jazz…"

"I didn't come back for Optimus."

Jazz shook his head, wrapping his arms around his frame.

"Primus knows I believe in our Prime. This," he waved a hand, gesturing back towards the village, "all this, it's like a dream. It's what I was always fightin' for." He vented again, drawing air into a frame with scarcely more substance. "But, y'know, I never doubted Optimus could pull it off, with or without me." The saboteur shrugged. "I'm not big-helmed enough t' think me hangin' around was gonna change things. Would've been nice t' take old Megs out, won't deny it, but the kid was doing a fair job of that. An' Prime had Ratch, an' Hide, an' Bee… and he had you."

Prowl blinked at his friend, confused and concerned.

"Nah. Primus himself was holding th' door open, offerin' t' let me rest, offerin' me peace 'til I got sent out for another go 'round. It was temptin', believe me." Jazz still wouldn't meet his optics. His fists opened and clenched, his words spilling into the night in a soft stream.

"But you stayed." Prowl's processor raced, trying to make sense of what he was hearing, trying to parse Jazz's meaning.

"I stayed. Because, Prowler, I stood there, standin' on the edge of the Well, and all I could think of were th' things I never said t' you. I looked at infinity, and knew it would mean nothin' without you."

Prowl's vents stalled. He stared, the world trembling around him and his wing-tips trembling with it.

At last, Jazz looked up. His visor gleamed in the night, searching Prowl's faceplates. Slender, curved servos came up to rest over a pale chest. "So I clung on, Prowler, because this spark wasn't mine t' give away, not even when it was Primus askin'. My spark is yours an' always has been. So I've gotta ask… because I've gotta know… is there any way y' can find it in y'self t' feel the same?"

Prowl gazed down into Jazz's face, one hand rising to hover above a blue-white cheek. Sunstreaker thought he'd find the question difficult. The once-golden twin had warned Prowl not to listen to his processor, not to get in his own way.

Sunstreaker had been wrong.

Prowl had watched Prime shape their new world, and he'd helped every step of the way. He'd fought when fighting was needed, negotiated, traded, planned and prepared. He'd lived through the worst war in the history of their people, and the dawn of a new peace. He'd done his duty from first to last. Jazz knew him well enough to allow him that. Jazz knew his all.

Now he let one servo-tip trail down the saboteur's faceplates, turning his hand to caress a pale cheek. For once in his life, there was no conflict. There was no guilt. For the first time since Praxus fell into ruin he felt truly free. His processor and spark, his duty and desire, were in perfect accord.

He felt the distant resonance of Jazz's spark and his own cried out to close the distance between them.

"Jazz… " Prowl looked into the upturned visor and gave voice to the nightmare that had haunted him almost since they first met, and the dream that he'd clung to for just as long.

"Jazz, I've tried to imagine my world without you. I've tried to pretend life could go on without you by my side." His door-wings trembled. "One short week believing it must almost destroyed me. My duty compelled me to stay. My spark did not know how." He smiled, the expression gentle and glad. "When you returned, I was overjoyed for my own sake, and sorrowful for yours. I would have seen you safe to the Well, if that's what you desired. I'd have given everything for you, and not grieved to do so, even if my spark faded, bereft."

"Prowler…" Jazz shook, the movement barely detectable under Prowl's careful servo-tips. The helm in front of him was almost transparent, just a glimmer in the starlight.

Prowl's chestplates shifted, the music of transformation dancing on the air. The tactician bared his spark chamber without shame or hesitation, giving it freely to the mech who had long since taken possession in spark. "Bond with me."

"I… We can't… The twins… Sunny had to break their bond… Sideswipe… you saw what it did to him..."

A single teardrop slipped from behind the visor, shaped of light and grief. Prowl brushed it away, calm at last.

"Our bond will not break. Not now. Not ever. If you must face eternity once more, you will not do it alone."

There was so much more to be said, and so little time. Words were meaningless now. Jazz's frame was already wavering, losing its form. Prowl dimmed his optics as the saboteur leaned forward against him, the wandering spark drawn home at last.

* * *

"Prowl?"

Exhausted, drained both physically and mentally, it had taken him an hour to stumble to the edge of the village. He didn't have much longer. Already his frame was weak, faltering under the burden of supporting two sparks instead of one. His gait was unsteady, his vision narrowed. Moisture had condensed from the night air onto his plating, tiny droplets making his frame shimmer and glisten in the light of their optics.

"Prowl, are you unwell?"

Prowl's servo hovered over his chestplates as if it could capture the warmth there, the love that flooded his all.

He looked up into Optimus Prime's worried expression with optics that radiated joy.

"Optimus, I truly believe I've never been better."


	3. Epilogue

**Epilogue.**

One hundred years.

It was hard to believe a full Earth Century had passed since Mission City ended their old world and set them on the path to a new one.

Children played in the park now. Not many, to be sure, but the seven new sparks laughing and running circles around the bronze plinth were more than had been recorded in the whole of Cybertronian history. Optimus Prime sat and watched them, feeling old and young, weary and refreshed all at the same time.

Unbidden, his optics rose to the statue on the plinth and the figures that watched silently over the sparklings. Two mechs stood side by side, cast in bronze and a gleaming, incorruptible alloy of steel. Prime's lieutenants would never be forgotten, but already the tales of their exploits were taking on the awed overtones of folklore. Each grew with the telling. Optimus had heard stories of the lithe silver trickster who had defied chance, who had fought for his friends with a fierce skill and endless love, and at last stood before Megatron alone and unafraid. He'd heard of the genius tactician who had snatched mechs from the servos of Primus, who had guided Optimus Prime through the long vorns, who embodied security and order, and had given the last of his spark's strength to see their people would know safety.

He recognised every tale. Alone of the surviving mechs, with perhaps Ratchet as the sole exception, he knew how much truth lay behind the awed words, and how little exaggeration.

Losing Prowl, in the same orn that they celebrated the gift Primus granted them, had been hard. The whispers of the Matrix, and the steady warmth in his spark as Primus smiled on them all, were Prime's comfort. He'd feared the day would come as soon as he'd seen Jazz's broken frame in his brother's servos, hoped for it since the spectre first gave him a shrug and a lop-sided grin, expected it since Prowl proved himself sensitive to a sight denied others.

As he'd told Ratchet, sometimes things happened because they must.

Dimming his optics, Prime summoned the memory of Prowl radiant in the night. He remembered the way the Matrix had throbbed in his chest, the moment when he'd _known_, and smiled softly. There was no sorrow in the memory.

A cry disturbed Prime's meditation. The keen of distress in a young voice bounced him to his feet, his plating flared and his systems battle ready within nano-klicks.

The scars of war still ran deep in the mechs who had lived with it for an eternity.

He forced his weapons offline, flattening his armour before the sparklings could take fright. Two careful steps took him forward to the base of the podium, and the small mechling, alone, uninjured and unthreatened, who stood in its shadow.

"You know, rubbing your optics will just make them hurt."

The keening sparkling startled. The little one stumbled back a few steps, his clenched servos dropping away from his faceplates. He blinked blearily upwards, his lubricant-streaked cheeks raised to search for the source of so deep a voice.

Optimus looked down into tiny blue optics that seemed almost too bright in the morning sunshine. The infant keened again, ducking his helm. Optimus squatted, reaching out with infinite care to caress the small helm with a single finger servo that rivalled it in size. He gathered the little sparkling to his side, cupping him in one gentle hand.

"Small one, tell me. What is wrong?"

"Hurts." The word escaped between keens. The sparkling was rubbing at his optics again, and, too late, Prime remembered Ratchet's report of the week before. The news that the youngest of their precious sparklings was showing signs of optic oversensitivity had shaken all the council, but Ratchet had assured them that it was nothing to concern them. Prime had no hesitation in agreeing. Both Optimus and his medic had known mechs whose protective visors were as much boon as burden. Glancing up at the statue beside him, turning so the infant was sheltered in the shadow between his bulk and the images of his long-gone lieutenants, Optimus reminded himself of that fact.

"Do you have a visor, sparkling? Did Ratchet give you something to cover your optics?"

The little one blinked. His physical pain was lessened now, with most of the light blocked. Cupping the sparkling to his chest-plates, Prime felt the Matrix pulse reassurance against the infant's emotional distress too.

"Lost." The child peered up at Prime, tilting his helm as he tried to focus. He blinked once more before lubricant overflowed his too-bright optics. "Hurts," he sobbed again.

"Op'mus?"

Optimus Prime's sensor grid warned him just seconds before he felt a small servo pat his pede, and heard a thin, high voice call his name. Reaching out, he gathered the second sparkling into his hands beside the first. This little mech was taller, his form a little bulkier even given the few years between them, but his energy field buzzed with curiosity and concern.

The newcomer squirmed in Prime's grip, and it took Optimus several klicks to notice the sparkling had one arm outstretched, straining as he offered his crying friend a slender curve of glass and shaped metal.

"Found it," the slightly older mechling explained, his expression serious as he looked up at Optimus. "Here." He warbled, the familiar sound attracting his friend's attention, and offered the visor again when he had it. "Found it."

The little mech blinked, reached out, and then Prime found himself juggling, trying to stop the infants from falling as the first mechling tackled his saviour in a full-body embrace.

Both laughed – a happy, carefree sound – before pulling back.

The elder sat in Prime's hand, looking down at the visored infant beside him with a shy, amused half-smile.

The younger sparkling's keens had faded, the tracks of lubricant drying on his faceplates. He tilted his helm and favoured the taller mechling with a broad, lop-sided grin.

The moment was spark-shatteringly familiar. Prime stood, his vents frozen, while deep in his chest, the Matrix pulsed its welcome and delight at the reunion.

"Op'mus?" It took Optimus a few klicks to notice that the elder mechling was standing on his outstretched palm, the younger close at his side, both looking up at Optimus with too-familiar frowns on their small faces. The little one warbled a query, words beyond him but the concern audible.

Prime looked up at the statue behind him, and then down at the infants cradled next to his spark.

"Op'mus okay?"

Optimus Prime smiled.

"I've never been better," he told them.

* * *

**The End**


End file.
